WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will visit Texas on Tuesday, with stops in the El Paso area and Austin.

An administration official confirmed the trip, but the White House has not formally announced it yet.

Obama aides have suggested he might make a play for Texas in next year’s election; he lost the state handily in 2008. Republicans view it as wishful thinking or perhaps a head-fake intended to force them to spend more to defend the 38 electoral votes at stake in 2012.

“If what you're telling me is Texas is a conservative state, you’re absolutely right,” Obama told WFAA-TV (Ch. 8) last month. But, he said, “I never write off any states. I love Texas.”

The Austin stop will focus on fundraising.

As for El Paso, he may stop at Fort Bliss, where he made a short visit on Aug. 31 to preview his Oval Office speech that night, when he announced a drawdown in Iraq.

Obama has been visiting sites related to the war on terror since Osama bin Laden’s death Sunday. He is visiting Ground Zero in New York City on Thursday and Fort Campbell, Ky., on Friday, to meet with troops recently returned from Afghanistan.

Texas officials in both parties have long urged the president to visit the border, to see for himself the consequences of an immigration system he has long described as broken, and to inspect the costly upgrades to border security made in recent years. El Paso’s neighbor across the Rio Grande, Ciudad Juárez, has suffered the bloodiest violence of Mexico’s war with the drug cartels.

State officials also have urged Obama to tour wildfire damage that has scorched 2.2 million acres in the last six months, in hopes that FEMA will reconsider its rejection of Gov. Rick Perry’s request to declare a major disaster in Texas.

An aide to Sen. John Cornyn -- who runs the GOP senatorial campaign committee -- called it offensive for Obama to raise campaign cash in Texas while rejecting the state’s request for major disaster assistance.

“I’m sure Texans in those areas affected by the fires would appreciate a commander in chief who is more concerned about their lives and livelihoods than he is with filling his campaign coffers,” said Cornyn spokesman Kevin McLaughlin.

This will be Obama’s fifth trip to Texas as president.

In 2009, he came to Texas A&M on Oct. 16 for a forum on volunteerism with former President George H.W. Bush. On Nov. 10, he returned on short notice for a more somber occasion – the Fort Hood memorial service for 13 victims of a massacre by Army Maj. Nidal Hassan. Obama made two visits last year, as well: On Aug. 9, he headlined Democratic fund-raisers in Dallas and Austin. On Aug. 31, he spent just over an hour at Fort Bliss.